Scheduled Reports - Don't send $$USER.ID Reports

[LauraRa1]

Hi all Has anyone else tried to schedule a report to send out where it provides data based on the person logged in, i.e. $$USER.ID? I've had a round or two with support on this only to hear the words of doom 'shall I submit a feature request'. Aparently this isn't something that WF can do at this point. I've suggested that WF include metion of this huge limitation in it's help website so others don't go through the pain I've just been through. Does anyone have any thoughts on possible ways to get round this? All I want is to send a weekly report to all my users that tells them which of their tasks are overdue! Thanks

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Laura, We ran into this a few years ago. $$USER.ID doesn't work because the people are not logging into the system and you have multiple people in the To field so the system doesn't know whose permissions to use. Our workaround was to go with the "shame email" approach where everyone sees all the overdue tasks of everyone on that team (we did confine it to team and not whoel agency). To ease the pain a little, we set it to go out 9am and it includes tasks due today as well as overdue. But that is the best we could come up with.

[LauraRa1]

Ok, glad I’m not going crazy! I like your work around, I think I’ll use that. Would be totally fine per team. Thanks Anthony! Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image002.png@01D22300.6FDD6C40]

[BethMa1]

Strange; I haven't had a problem with this. We have a report go out weekly with tasks assigned to the user without hours logged. The report filters include "assignment users ID" contains $$USER.ID so it's just the tasks of the individual recipient. Then the repeating delivery, sent to the relevant Workfront group, includes a PDF format so it's an attachment on the notification email, and it has the access rights of me (an admin). So they wouldn't have to log in so just see the list of tasks. But if they wanted to click through to take action on any of those tasks, they would have to log in. Happy to provide more detail, but I think it would be possible to do what you describe. Beth Massura Assistant Director of Operations, Marketing The University of Chicago Booth School of Business 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60637 Phone: 773.702.7598

[EricLu2]

Beth - since the report runs with your permissions, what is in the PDF report they get? Is it the task list for everyone? Is it the task list for just your tasks? If you send it in Excel, I think the tasks have a hyperlink they can click. I thought the PDF had hyperlinks too, now that I think of it. Can they just click the link in the PDF and it takes them into WorkFront? Thanks! Eric

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Beth, I would check your report. If you have a report filter of $$USER.ID, but then are running the report with your permissions/access, the users will probably see tasks assigned to you and not to them. (I've made this mistake before... several times unfortunately. LOL!) If you got it to work, I'd love to see what you did as we have users who would definitely like to just see their stuff.

[BethMa1]

Wow; we've been using this report for at least a year and no one ever pointed out that the PDF attachment does in fact show my tasks, not theirs... Guess they haven't been looking at it carefully or maybe they're just clicking on the link to log in instead. Well, glad I found out via this thread! Beth Massura Assistant Director of Operations, Marketing The University of Chicago Booth School of Business 5807 South Woodlawn Avenue Chicago, Illinois 60637 Phone: 773.702.7598

[MarcMo]

The inability to do this seems like an oversight, so hopefully they'll fix it soon. In the meantime, what we have to do is create a repeating delivery for each person (send to PersonA with access rights of PersonA, send to PersonB with access rights of PersonB, etc.) It's very painful and really increases overhead but it gets the job done if this is something you need.

[LauraRa1]

Yes, agreed, the work around is painful. I fully believe this is a bug and not ‘expected behaviour’…. Don’t get me started! Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image002.png@01D234E3.1AF7E580]

[RyanCa]

I tried to do the same thing via repeating deliveries unfortunately that has a limit of 10 repeating deliveries so I too am not creating individual reports by user with a repeating delivery for them only, then on to the next etc etc. It will net with me creating the same report 50 times (obviously with copying that's not a big deal) but it is very inefficient.

[RyanCa]

The other solution would be to allow you to send the report without an attachment - so that way there wouldn't be a chance of confusion. So i'll just go ahead and submit a feature request for this.

[Kelly_Wehrmann]

That is a good idea, Ryan. An email with just the link to direct them to Workfront....they click the link and viola! the see the stuff they need to instead of getting confused by an attachment.

[MarcMo]

That will work for some users but not for everyone. We have some internal customers that just aren't going to go into the system (like our CEO). They want an attachment that they can open on their phone when they have a chance to take a look.

[MarcMo]

Ryan - copying isn't a big deal but it creates a lot of extra noise in the list of reports. This gets really messy because there isn't an easy way to separate them - for example. If there is a An Open Task report, copying it means that we have to have Jim's Open Task Report and Mary's Open Task Report, etc. And in there are scenarios where you just want the title to be "Open Task Report" without having the customized title show up on everything. Aside from that, maintenance becomes a nightmare. Changes to 50 instead of 1. And it's hard to know which reports are copies of each other.